Women who were looking for information about natural methods told us, “He didn`t want to spend five minutes discussing the problem with me, he just wanted to write a prescription for the pill.” Other women told us that doctors did their best to persuade them to take the pill when they went for a postnatal check-up, even though these women had not sought advice and their families were already sufficiently separated. 137 McCafferty also notes that the public reaction highlighted the gulf between the Church and the Irish people: “People agreed with us, and it was huge because we were against the Church. [We] touched a popular nerve. I mean, it was a real fear, it was a real fear and it was all very good people who said. “Let them silence you,” but what would happen to the people who depended on your ministry? You had to be responsible at the same time, whereas when they closed family planning services in Dublin, IFPA was still there and Well Woman was still there. If they closed the Galway clinic, look at who you are affecting, Connemara, Mayo, all the people who had become dependent on this small clinic.122 The Health (Family Planning) Act 1979 came into force in November 1980. Its stated purpose was “to ensure the orderly organization of family planning services,” which meant excluding and controlling established illegal distributors. Family planning services could, with the “consent” of the Minister of Health, be allowed to provide information and instruction on family planning, but not to sell or import contraceptives.124 The provision of contraceptives by means other than sale was prohibited.125 More importantly, contraceptives could only be purchased under the supervision of a pharmacist with a doctor`s prescription. The physician had to approve the purchase after verifying that the contraceptives would be used for “bona fide family planning purposes or for reasonable medical reasons.”126 In fact, this law criminalized the clinical model. It also threatened the mail-order sector – the funding engine for clinics – because mail-order businesses had not received prescriptions. More broadly, the legislation posed a threat to the movement`s social mission. Condoms were much more expensive to buy from a pharmacist than at the family planning clinic. Until 1982, a pack of 12 condoms, available at SPF for £1,80,127, cost between £2.50 and £3.20 from a pharmacist.128 A doctor`s visit usually cost £5 or £6 before buying condoms.129 These fees made access to contraceptives out of reach for many working-class customers.
There was no health justification for requiring doctors to prescribe non-medical contraceptives.130 FPS said they would openly flout the law. They sold condoms without a prescription, did not hire a pharmacist and maintained the mail order business. Commercial activities continued “normally”.131 In fact, FPS opened a new clinic in 1984, which it publicly admitted was not operating in accordance with the law.132 For Galway`s smallest rural clinic, however, compliance with the law was almost impossible. They had no choice but to wait and see how the law could be enforced.133 But the founders of the SPF felt strong enough to live with imperfect compliance. As one founder explained, “At that point, we were so well established that it was a de facto feat.” 134 This article examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. In the context of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law that would not allow condoms to be sold in ordinary commercial premises or vending machines and would limit their sale to young people. By evoking a concept of “transformative illegality”, we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalization of the commercial sale of condoms. However, rather than prioritizing the illegal sale of condoms as a kind of spectacular direct action, we show that the tactic of illegal selling in the 1990s was based on 20 years of daily illicit sales within the Irish family planning movement. Daily illegal selling was a long-term world-creating practice that gradually changed the legal meaning of condoms and eventually allowed for new forms of provocative and disrespectful protest.
Condoms “became legal” when the state recognized the types of condom sales that have been gradually accumulated over the years and released in direct action and in court. Abortion was banned in 1983 when the state passed a law equating the life of the fetus with that of the mother, and in 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that access to out-of-state travel information for abortion was illegal. Grassroots activists fought against these laws, and when shocking cases like the 14-year-old rape victim were denied access to abortion in Case X in 1992, abortion became a heated debate in feminist, medical and religious circles. We did it, we had stalls, we distributed leaflets and we distributed condoms. We obviously found it to be a very serious subject, there was always a kind of mood towards lightness, with balloons or people in costumes or. And we would have done everything to get noticed and make a difference. So we didn`t run a campaign as such, we certainly tried to spread condoms as widely as possible (ES, AIDS West, Galway. Interview with Máiréad Enright, Galway, 26 June 2014). Virgin`s booth supported IFPA`s efforts to dismantle the legal meanings of condoms and replace them with new ones. It builds on the work they are already doing in AIDS public education, with health workers, in schools and in the media. They knew that condoms were not available to everyone under the current law. Happy to say that we did a press conference at the Virgin Megastore after, and there was a huge publicity as if it was something that jumped around the world, how we were treated in Australia, it was mentioned in the United States of America, on TV on Good Morning America, It was all over the newspapers.
[…] You know, I`ve heard that the people at the State Department weren`t very happy when the various embassies around the world said, “Oh my God, there`s another thing that the Irish are as backward as these condom laws,” but that was part of our goal: to let people know what the law was (JOB, Youth Officer and Press Officer, IFPA, interview with Máiréad Enright via Skype, 19 March 2014). Women`s personal accounts of birth control pills in Ireland in the run-up to legalisation tend to focus on three key issues: first, the power of doctors over women`s reproductive choices in the pre-legalisation period; secondly, women`s conviction that they took the pill with a clear conscience; and third, the importance of class. For many Irish women, taking the birth control pill meant bypassing medical, legal and religious authority. However, as many articles in the print media pointed out, as with other forms of contraception, there was a significant class divide in terms of access. In particular, they interpret the law as prohibiting the sale of condoms, but not providing them in exchange for donations. They decided: IFPA`s annual reports illustrate the prevalence of birth control pills as a method of family planning for IFPA patients in Dublin clinics. In 1972, for example, 47.1% of patients at IFPA`s Merrion Square Clinic and 48% at Mountjoy Square Clinic were prescribed oral contraceptives. In 1973, 57% of Merrion Square patients and 37% of Mountjoy Square patients were prescribed an oral contraceptive. By 1974 this share had increased to 66% in Synge Street (formerly Merrion Square) and 48% in Mountjoy Square, in 1976 to 68.25% in Synge Street and in 1976 to 59.16% in Mountjoy Square. 41 Contemporary newspaper articles suggest that the contraceptive pill was also easily prescribed by GPs in Ireland – this often involved doctors entering into a private agreement with patients.
